Stephen Brashear-Imagn Photos
We’ve been writing about Cal Raleigh loads these days, as we should always. He’s at the moment on tempo for 9.9 WAR, which might represent the best season of all time for a catcher. Though his protection has taken a step again from its earlier heights, Raleigh is operating an absurd 182 wRC+ and main baseball with 26 house runs. He’ll have to return right down to Earth sooner or later, however he’s all however sure to steer all catchers in house runs for the third straight season. He’s almost doubled the second-place Logan o’hoppe’s 14. Raleigh has an actual shot to interrupt Salvador Perez’s file of 48 house runs by a catcher – if he retains up his present tempo, he’ll break it by 16 homers!
On Could 19, Ben Clemens wrote about how effectively Raleigh’s new, extra selective method was understanding. Although Raleigh was taking extra pitches over the guts of the plate in hitter’s counts (a pattern that has continued within the ensuing weeks), the persistence has allowed him to get forward extra usually and do injury. “Does all of this imply that Raleigh goes to keep up his 170 wRC+?” Ben requested. “No means.” That was the one reply he may have given. To recommend in any other case would have been sabermetric malpractice. However, uh, Raleigh didn’t precisely regress again to the imply from there on out. From Could 20 to June 8, Raleigh was the perfect hitter in baseball, slashing .348/.427/.894 with 13 homers for a 267 wRC+. His common exit velocity was 97.2 mph! That’s what it takes to – barely – hit higher than Aaron Decide.
It nonetheless appears secure to imagine that Raleigh gained’t hold his wRC+ above 180 or put up the primary 10-win catcher season in historical past. First, that’s a ridiculously excessive degree to keep up. Raleigh has only one hit previously two video games, and people two video games dropped his wRC+ by 9 factors. He’ll additionally in all probability get drained sooner or later. The Mariners have made a devoted effort to ease his catching load after he led the majors in innings caught in 2024, completed second in 2023, and fifth in 2022. This season, 13 of his 64 begins have come at DH, besides, he’s sat out only one recreation. He leads all catchers with 284 plate appearances, and ranks fourth in innings caught. So whereas this does characterize a lighter load, he’s nonetheless not precisely getting a lot relaxation.
For proper now, although, Raleigh is in rarefied air. Final week, whereas writing about Josh Bell’s BABIP woes, I discovered myself wanting up each certified season in AL/NL historical past and dividing house runs by complete hits. Bell ranks 350th on the checklist, which places him within the 97th percentile. He actually is having a bizarre season. He simply can’t purchase a success until it’s a house run. However the prime of the checklist was what actually shocked me. Listed here are the all-time leaders.
Hits Per HR (Certified Seasons)
Season
Title
HR
H
HR/H
2001
Barry Bonds
73
156
46.8%
1998
Mark McGwire
70
152
46.1%
1999
Mark McGwire
65
145
44.8%
2017
Joey Gallo
41
94
43.6%
2023
Kyle Schwarber
47
115
40.9%
2025
Cal Raleigh
26
64
40.6%
1996
Mark McGwire
52
132
39.4%
1997
Mark McGwire
58
148
39.2%
2018
Joey Gallo
40
103
38.8%
2021
Joey Gallo
38
99
38.4%
1961
Roger Maris
61
159
38.4%
Greater than 40% of Raleigh’s hits have been homers, which places him in sixth place. To be clear, that’s sixth place out of 13,784 certified participant seasons, and he’s sandwiched behind a number of the greatest and most excessive house run hitters of all time. The 60-homer barrier has been crossed eight occasions in baseball historical past, and 4 of these eight seasons present up within the prime 11. And there’s Raleigh proper within the center.
Quickly after I seen this, Mark Simon of Sports activities Data Options wrote a cool article about defensive positioning. As he defined, “The out chances we use in establishing a participant’s Defensive Runs Saved embrace a price particular to positioning.” Utilizing these chances, Mark calculated which gamers had been damage probably the most by glorious defensive positioning, and Raleigh was second on the checklist, or perhaps tied with Marcus seedsas each gamers have been at 2.5.
Raleigh presents a comparatively straightforward project for whoever is in command of printing up these little defensive positioning playing cards. He leads the league with a 56.9% pull price. Extra particularly, 37.1% of his batted balls are fly balls or line drives within the air. That’s proper, he’s almost 5 share factors above Isaac Paredesthe patron saint of pulling the ball within the air. That quantity is the second highest in the complete pitch monitoring period, behind solely Adam Duvall’s 38.1% in 2023. Nobody in baseball is pulling the ball within the air as predictably as Raleigh, and it’s a minimum of potential that Duvall is the one participant who has ever finished so. So this predictability has helped Raleigh launch tons of homers and extra-base hits, nevertheless it has additionally price him a few hits. And that explains that, I assumed.
However right here’s the factor: Raleigh’s .270 BABIP is 20 factors beneath the league common, nevertheless it’s neither unbelievably nor unsustainably low. In truth, till these previous two video games, he was operating the best BABIP of his complete profession. That’s the advantage of hitting the baseball actually exhausting. It doesn’t give even well-positioned defenders a lot of an opportunity. Raleigh’s common exit velocity on house runs is 105.5 mph. That ranks 52nd amongst all gamers with a minimum of 150 batted balls. On non-homers, his common exit velo is 90.5 mph, which ranks forty fifth. So whereas he’s a basic energy man with numerous whiffs and plenty of strikeouts, he’s not significantly all-or-nothing both. He hits the ball exhausting even when he’s not sending it out of the ballpark.
All of that is to say that Raleigh wasn’t atop the checklist as a result of he was solely homering and never getting common base hits. I pulled the season stats going again to 1901. Raleigh additionally ranks sixth all time in house runs per plate look (9.2%) and residential runs per ball in play (15.6%). He ranks eleventh in house runs per at-bat (10.7%). By any measure, he’s homering at one of many highest charges in baseball historical past. I don’t know how lengthy this can proceed – seeing what occurred after Ben’s article, I don’t wish to low cost the chance that Raleigh will proceed operating a 180 wRC+ till the warmth demise of the universe – however we should always in all probability get pleasure from it whereas we are able to. Raleigh is actually doing one thing particular this season.
